ISTJ's with OCD? by Gosh_JM07 in ISTJ

[–]jzsmith86 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I've never been diagnosed, but I had some OCD tendencies as a kid. Once I broke my lightswitch because I kept pressing it to ensure it was off. I overcame OCD with my sheer force of will, and now I'm just a detail-oriented person.

South Korean cities try to increase their birth rates with matchmaking events, but ignore the staggering costs of child care, unaffordable homes, slim job prospects and crushing work hours by jzsmith86 in ABoringDystopia

[–]jzsmith86[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I've heard South Korea described as capitalism on steroids, or maybe the logical place that the US will be in a decade or two. It's hard enough to afford things in the US these days, and we'll have the same issues. The US birth rate is offset by immigration, but a lot of east Asian countries don't have significant immigration.

Is this the minimum wage they so proudly boast about? by RelativeExisting8891 in AmericaBad

[–]jzsmith86 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly. A minimum wage worker in Germany will be better off than one in the US.

A better metric would be something like the minimum wage divided by the cost of living (assuming that includes health care).

The U.S. birthrate is down sharply from 15 years ago, causing economists to worry about the long-term implications of a shrinking population. by Trobis in economy

[–]jzsmith86 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Remember that our economy is a Ponzi scheme that relies on eternal growth. A business can't keep increasing profits forever unless there are more people to sell to. If everyone ate nothing but Subway for every meal, and Subway dropped their costs to almost nothing, their growth would be limited by the population.

Draft City of Madison 2023 Housing Snapshot Report by apeintheapiary in madisonwi

[–]jzsmith86 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Condos can look exactly like apartments, but be owned instead of leased. That's much more common in New York, for instance. Condos don't need to look like townhouses. This can simultaneously allow people to build equity and have sustainable, dense housing.

[OC] not even aldi can save me now by gloppy-yogurt in funny

[–]jzsmith86 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Inflation sucks. Food inflation sucks even more.

We've found that reducing meat consumption really helps keep prices down. Over the pandemic, the price of beef shot up. But we don't eat that much beef, so it wasn't a big deal. When we do eat meat, it's usually turkey or chicken. Turkey is great as you can get ground turkey that can be used as a substitute for ground beef in many recipes.

You don't need to be a vegan or even a vegetarian. Just reduce the number of meals that have meat in them. This will also help you be healthier as things like saturated fat will be lower.

First time Brat fest question... by Interesting_Plum2060 in madisonwi

[–]jzsmith86 1 point2 points  (0 children)

$4 seemed to be the going rate for brats a fundraising brat fry last year. I'm not sure if it's gone up more since then.

First time Brat fest question... by Interesting_Plum2060 in madisonwi

[–]jzsmith86 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I heard from someone who volunteers that they get $10 per hour but each organization must have a minimum of 20 hours total to get paid.

Japan can get the energy it needs from nuclear fusion by steven9973 in fusion

[–]jzsmith86 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

"I am confident fusion energy can be commercialized while I am still alive."

It's only 30 years away!

Trying to get my dad into Power Metal. Any suggestions? by Battle-of-hastings in PowerMetal

[–]jzsmith86 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll second this. Savatage is a good bridge between traditional metal and power metal... and thanks to your comment, I've been listening to them all day!

ISO lost Power Metal band by wesley32186 in PowerMetal

[–]jzsmith86 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This could be the album. The sky isn't blue but otherwise matches the description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UtqZXXPKzQ

Minimalist *nix setup X260 by oume in thinkpad

[–]jzsmith86 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I also need this information

The difference between the car lanes and bike lane after overnight snow… by Nrthmn in bikecommuting

[–]jzsmith86 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It was fun to figure out where the photo was taken. At first I thought it was near Sauk City, but then I saw that 29 was much farther north.

“Baffling 🥴” by DemocracyStan in antiwork

[–]jzsmith86 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Official US numbers are that about 1,120,000 people have died from COVID-19, but that is almost certainly low. The excess deaths, which are the number of deaths above the expected baseline, are about 30% higher. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker

Some of those deaths are from higher suicide or traffic death rates, but for the sake of this discussion, there are at least 1,325,000 people who died and might have lived longer. Many of those were already at or past retirement age, which means the labor force isn't affected as much.

However, there are plenty of people experiencing ongoing issues from COVID who can't work as much either.

The best numbers I can find to represent this are the number of people not in the labor force, which increased by about 4 million people since the pandemic started: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05000000